COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Brown, Texas aim for rebound

Longhorns finished 5-7 last season

SAN ANGELO, Texas - It's been a long time since Mack Brown or the Texas Longhorns faced a football season as challenging as the one they endured in 2010.

The Longhorns went 5-7 last season, their worst record since 1997. Brown took over the program the in 1998, and the Longhorns enjoyed 12 straight years of at least nine wins until the run ended last season.

For Brown, he hadn't experienced a year as rough as last season since 1989, when his North Carolina team went 1-10 in back-to-back years.

One thing the 2010 season did accomplish, however, was helping Longhorns fans appreciate just how good it has been since Brown arrived in Austin, where he has put together a 133-34 record in 13 years at the school.

Brown received a warm reception Friday at the Texas Exes luncheon at Bentwood Country Club in San Angelo. He introduced his largely new staff, which features six first-year Longhorns coaches.

Brown said last year wasn't his most challenging season as a head coach — it just felt like that to others because the Longhorns had become so accustomed to winning.

"In my early years, I fought two 1-10 seasons, so it was very difficult," Brown said. "But if you look at the standard we've set at Texas, we've had our ups and downs and we've had some struggles. But the fact that we won 10 ... games for nine years, there's no question it was a dip.

"When we've always been able to come out of tough times during a season, we weren't able to do that, and I don't know why. So we've got to go back and be able to compete every week, and if something bad happens, step up the next week and overcome it and not let one game beat you twice. And we didn't do that last year."

Brown was in San Angelo for the 14th straight summer for the 38th annual Angelo Football Clinic. He said he has made a point every year to bring his staff to speak at the clinic.

"When I first came to Texas 14 years ago, (clinic directors) Wade Phillips, Hardy McCrary, Jerry Vandergriff, Mike Martin, coach (Jim) Hess, all those guys, they all sat down with me and said, 'We need your help. We need Texas to have a presence here,' " Brown said. "We've had some tremendous football players from this area. West Texas is valuable to us. So I told them we'd be here every year. We'd be here as a staff every year and make sure we've got a presence. I think it helps Texas as much as it helps this clinic."

Brown said he's enjoying his first offseason with his new assistant coaches.

"The transition's been fun for me because there are a lot of new ideas," Brown said. "When you have a lot of the same staff for 13 years — we didn't change a staff member for the last three — if you're not careful, you get into ruts where you do the same things because they're working."

The Longhorns could also see a change at quarterback, though no one has unseated upcoming junior Garrett Gilbert just yet.

Gilbert had the unenviable task of replacing Colt McCoy last season, and he had his share of struggles in his first year as the starter.

"Anytime you're not winning, the quarterback is going to get blamed for it," Brown said. "Garrett was the national player of the year, and he won two state championships in high school. I don't think my performance was very good. I don't think our team's was, and I don't think our coaches' was. If it was, we'd have won more football games, and (Gilbert) gets the brunt of that."

Though he defended Gilbert, Brown said the job will also be an open competition this summer with four quarterbacks in the mix, including Connor Wood (Houston Second Baptist), Case McCoy (Graham) and David Ash (Belton).

"Everybody says if you've got four in the spring, then you don't have one," Brown said. "But we want to see who leads this summer. We want to see who steps up and gets the confidence of the team, and we want to see who comes back and is ready to take that position.

"It's very unique to have four quarterbacks. It's very unique to have four good ones, and we're trying to make sure one of those guys deserves this job by stepping up in the fall."

Brown also needs to sort out exactly how he'll handle the new Longhorn Network, a 24-hour TV network that ESPN and the University of Texas are set to launch in August.

"When they paid 300 million dollars, they want a lot of access," Brown said. "They want to do practice live. They said, 'Everybody's going to want to see it.' I said, 'Yeah, A&M, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, everybody's going to want to see it.' So we've really got to sit down and make sure we give our fans a great behind-the-scenes look at Texas football, and at the same time protect our team and our coaches from our opponents."

The network will give everyone an inside look at how Brown and the Longhorns respond to last year's setback.